Among the dignitaries present at Aretha Franklin’s funeral was Louis Farrakhan—the viciously anti-Semitic leader of the Nation of Islam—who was seated just a few chairs away from Bill Clinton. Jonathan Tobin notes that, at a time when there seems to be so much outrage directed at those deemed guilty by association, there seemed to be very little reserved for those who associate with Farrakhan:

You don’t have to have much of an imagination to ponder what would happen if [the former Ku Klux Klan leader, and current white supremacist, David] Duke received a similar place of honor at a funeral for a famous singer. Or the storm that would follow if a former GOP president were to share a platform with Duke, or, as Clinton did with Farrakhan, shake his hand. That would have been the only story coming out of such an event, dwarfing the coverage that Franklin’s funeral or even John McCain’s funeral received. But that didn’t happen when Clinton treated Farrakhan as just another friend of Franklin’s who deserved respect last Friday. . . .

The only explanation is that, for many in the media and the liberal political establishment, hate coming from a black or Islamic group or individual is somehow less odious than hate from white supremacists—even if their rhetoric is remarkably similar. This may stem in part from the bogus theory about prejudice that holds that it’s impossible for blacks or anyone without power to be guilty of racism. But the problem goes deeper than that absurd assertion. Hate from any source that can’t be identified as somehow tied to conservatives or President Trump is simply of no interest to the political left these days. . . .

[Furthermore], whatever they may think of Trump, the mainstream media should not excuse Farrakhan’s anti-Semitism and hatred for whites or pretend that it’s a result of a misunderstanding. The Franklin funeral may be dismissed as a meaningless media event with no [larger] impact. But the truth is that it was a major triumph for Farrakhan and his efforts to bring his message of Jew-hatred into the mainstream. The willingness of the networks to ignore Farrakhan’s hate along with the ability of figures such as Clinton and Stevie Wonder [who took part in a documentary about Farrakhan] to embrace him with impunity allows the virus of hate to spread. A society in which Farrakhan’s anti-Semitism is normalized, as it was last week, is one in which Jews cannot claim to be entirely safe.

Ron Ben-Yishai explains Hamas’s current calculations:

Strategically speaking, Hamas is hoping to add more and more days to the pause currently in effect, setting a new reality in stone, one which will convince the United States to get Israel to end the war. At the same time, they still have most of the hostages hidden in every underground crevice they could find, and hope to exchange those with as many Hamas and Islamic Jihad prisoners currently in Israeli prisons, planning on “revitalizing” their terrorist inclinations to even the odds against the seemingly unstoppable Israeli war machine.

Chances are that if pressured to do so by Qatar and Egypt, they will release men over 60 with the same “three-for-one” deal they’ve had in place so far, but when Israeli soldiers are all they have left to exchange, they are unlikely to extend the arrangement, instead insisting that for every IDF soldier released, thousands of their people would be set free.

In one of his last speeches prior to October 7, the Gaza-based Hamas chief Yahya Sinwar said, “remember the number one, one, one, one.” While he did not elaborate, it is believed he meant he wants 1,111 Hamas terrorists held in Israel released for every Israeli soldier, and those words came out of his mouth before he could even believe he would be able to abduct Israelis in the hundreds. This added leverage is likely to get him to aim for the release for all prisoners from Israeli facilities, not just some or even most.